1. Field
The disclosed embodiments relate to biometric security. More specifically, the disclosed embodiments relate to a facial recognition authentication systems.
2. Related Art
With the growth of personal electronic devices that may be used to access a number of user accounts, and the increasing threat of identity theft and other security issues, there is a growing need for ways to securely access user accounts via electronic devices. Account holders are thus often required to have longer passwords that meet various criteria such as using a mixture of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and other symbols. With smaller electronic devices, such as smart phones, smart watches, “Internet of Things” (“IoT’) devices and the like, it may become cumbersome to attempt to type such long passwords into the device each time access to the account is desired. In some instances, users may even decide to deactivate such cumbersome security measures due to their inconvenience on their devices. Thus, users of such devices may prefer other methods of secure access to their user accounts.
One other such method may be through the use of biometrics. For example, an electronic device may have an optical reader that may scan a user's fingerprint to determine that the person requesting access to a device or an account is authorized. However, such fingerprint systems are often prohibitively expensive for use on a small electronic device, or are often considered unreliable and unsecure.
In addition, facial recognition is generally known and may be used in a variety of contexts. Two-dimensional facial recognition is commonly used to tag people in images on social networks or in photo editing software. Facial recognition software, however, has not been widely implemented on its own to securely authenticate users attempting to gain access to an account because it not considered secure enough. For example, two dimensional facial recognition is considered unsecure because faces may be photographed or recorded, and then the resulting prints or video displays showing images of the user may be used to trick the system. Accordingly, there is a need for reliable, cost-effective, and convenient method to authenticate users attempting to log in to, for example, a user account.